It has the 24 th-best air quality score across all 200 cities in the study. Olathe, Kansas ties for fourth place in the study with Sunnyvale, California, and has the seventh-lowest property crime rate in this study at 1,957 incidents per 100,000 residents. Both crime rates are relatively low and land in the top 25 of this study - 255 violent crimes and 2,541 property crimes per 100,000 residents. The percentage of the population engaging in excessive drinking is tied for the 14th-lowest in the study, 15.92%. Sunnyvale, California, which ties for fourth place with Olathe, Kansas, is a Bay Area city that has the 10th-lowest drug poisoning mortality rate in the study, at 7.76 per 100,000 residents.
McKinney also ranks high in our study of the best places to raise a family in Texas. McKinney ranks in the top 25 for violent crime at 288 per 100,000 residents and top 15 for drug poisoning mortality at 8.04 per 100,000 residents. McKinney, Texas, another city in the greater Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, has the eighth-lowest property crime rate in this study, at 1,980 per 100,000 residents. Cities like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago and Houston rank in the bottom 25 of the study. It isn’t big cities or rural locations that lead this list, but suburbs that can offer more potential for safety. They all perform particularly well in having low violent crime rates and drug poisoning rates. Three of the top 10 cities in our study are in Texas – Frisco, McKinney and McAllen – and three others are in California – Sunnyvale, Santa Clara and Orange. For more details on how we found and analyzed our data, see the data and methodology section below. In order to uncover the safest cities in the U.S., SmartAsset looked at the following metrics: violent crime rate, property crime rate, vehicular mortality rate, drug poisoning mortality rate, percentage of population engaging in excessive drinking and air quality index. Given those considerations, SmartAsset decided to find the safest cities in America. Choosing the right city allows them the peace of mind to work and raise a family. The mayor, however, appoints a city manager to oversee the city's day-to-day operations and to implement city policies.Safety is often at the top of most people’s list when they’re picking a place to live.